Alto - High Speed Rail (Toronto-Quebec City)

[micheal_can]

That may be true for long distance routes, but in relation to the current corridor - You underestimate several things

a) CN's determination to evict VIA
b) The obtuse and indirect accountabilities of the federal system when it comes to rail passenger.generally, which diffuses any public reaction or opposition and ensures no forward initiative is ever taken towards building rail passenger business..
c) The proven ability of Ottawa to force VIA to make a thousand successive paper cuts to its service plan, such that things gradually atrophy
d) The inertia of public opinion, which only notices after the service has gone.
e) The clear commitment of Ottawa to foist regional services on the provinces

How would this happen?

The first leg of the stool would be to take every current local stop between Toronto, Kingston, and Montreal and condense into stopping trains that do not compete with Alto for the end-point business. That would probably look like at most four or five trains each way.... same frequency of stops as today, Kingston in particular would suffer from this service model, the other stops might not notice the difference.
The second leg would be to attrit some of those stops and schedules.
The third leg would be to relieve CN of any requirement to offer speed over 80 mph, and then possibly 75 mph. Small incremental increases in travel times that cumulatively erode the market..
The fourth leg of the stool would be to revise fares, on the premise that the local service requires far greater subsidy per ticket than before, in light of all the through riders and revenue shifting to Alto, and implement rigid reserved seating leading to a demand management model of fewer seats at higher price points
The cushion on the stool would be simply looking the other way as CN gives priority to freights and erodes timekeeping. Quite possibly, once Alto takes away the high priority VIA trains, CN would even eliminate some segments of double track.

How do I know this is doable? It's exactly how service was trimmed west of Toronto on three routes between 1985 and about 1995.

What the Lakeshore service needs, irrespective of Alto, is growth in the service plan and more frequent schedule options at all the intermediate points. Arguably, this would require somebody to invest in either additional trackage on the CN route, or build new dedicated trackage along a parallel line, as GO is doing in Halton Region. There is enough population along those communities to support this service - heck, there are more people along the Lakeshore than in Peterborough.

Today, folks can go to the centrally located station in Kingston and catch a train that takes about two hours to reach Toronto or Ottawa, with a very attractive choice of departure times. Even with the southern routing, replacing that with a half hour drive to a peripheral Alto station, so that they can have a one hour train ride on Alto, is not an improvement imho. And, there are already more cars making trips from those Lakeshore towns to Toronto than cars making the trip from Toronto all the way to Ottawa. The regional trains are essential to reduce highway congestion in the GTA.

Alto is Ontario's second highest priority for investing in rail. Improving the regional rail is the highest priority.

- Paul

If we were to remove all the passengers that were going to and from their end cities of T-O-M, Can a higher than 5 trains a day even be justified? I can see an express being justified, but keeping the ~15 trains each way a day.does not make sense.

 

[micheal_can]

Right now, The western Corridor has 6 trains to London, of which 5 are the southern route. On the southern route, 2 skip a few stations, but really no real express trains. With London over 3x the size of Kingston, there is more of an argument for more service west than east. However, with ridership data, Kingston does have a higher per capita ridership. In the end, if ALTO can get as close to Kingston as possible, and if Kingston Transit can connect to it, then all of this talk may be for not.

 

[just east of the creek]

I tend to think that VIA's legacy services are an unkillable cockroach.

It costs an absolute fortune to run The Canadian: per-passenger subsidies along this specific route often run into four figures. You could literally stop running the train, buy every passenger an airfare between the relevant city pair, and thereby achieve a net savings. The math on this train is rotten.

And despite what a lot of people assume, The Canadian is pretty terrible regional transport. Having a train that serves a stop 2 kilometres outside your town at 3 AM once a week is simply not a good service. If our goal was to provide good regional service, we'd spend a quarter as much on subsidizing bus routes instead.

So. Why does VIA do it? Well. Because Parliament makes them do it. VIA has a mandate to run the service, so they do.

But that's not a complete answer. This parliamentary mandate is not a fact of nature. Where does it come from?

Lots of weirdo railfans think it comes from them, and they're completely wrong.

It comes from the fact that The Canadian passes through about 70 electoral districts spanning multiple regions of the country, meaning that cancellation would attract nasty letters and protests outside the constituency offices of dozens of MPs, including representatives of every major party except the Bloc Quebecois. (Who you'd better believe would scream bloody murder if anyone tried to cancel The Ocean or the regional trains in Quebec.) This makes it surprisingly robust as a political undertaking, and therefore surprisingly robust as a line in the budget. Successive governments have sometimes tried to squeeze The Canadian, but nobody has yet seriously entertaining ending transcontinental service in Canada, mostly because it would piss off a lot of old-timers who actually show up and vote.

And the same basic protection extends to Kingston. Cutting Kingston off of the rail network is the sort of thing that would end an MP's career, even if their party gained seats in the next election. The same is generally true up and down the corridor in general: the Liberals came within 3% of winning Northumberland--Clarke last time, which means Port Hope and Cobourg definitely get to keep their rail service. Belleville's a red-hot marginal, so they keep their trains, too. The Conservative MP whose riding covers Smith's Falls is just ~3200 votes away from oblivion, so he certainly can't piss off that particular population centre...

Will VIA withdraw some services as ALTO comes online? Yes, most likely: there will be less demand for slow regional passenger services between these major cities, and VIA's existing semi-express services between these cities are about as close as the railway comes to profitability, so they'll be left with services that require greater subsidy, worsening the network's overall financial position.

But is Kingston about to fall off the rail network? No. Actually, in a post-ALTO world, Kingston becomes more vital to VIA's plans than ever before. Forget about being flyover country: in a world where VIA won't be able to compete on the major city pairs, they'll need to persuade the people of Ottawa that they want a weekend away in Kingston.

And unless something about our politics gets very weird over the next 50 years, they'll have parliamentary backing behind that pivot.

Well I can’t buy into your very negative take, but I do appreciate some of the very relevant points you make. I am not sure I have enough time to go into this, but here goes!

I have advocated before that the Canadian needs to be enhanced, a return to the CP Superior route, greater speeds and further catering to the fact that this is a signature tourist service first (with growth potential), and a regional transportation service second. If there are enough fares for a regional service, run one separately.
(And yes, I am aware of the myriad challenges to this right now)

The existing Lakeshore service needs higher speeds, more frequent service , and should be a featured part of Alto, maybe not in whole, but certainly in part, and including Kingston.. I joke about Sharbot Lake all the time, if runnng this proposed HSR line through hundreds of km’s of cottage country vs serving established locales with industry, population and the potential for more growth makes any sense.

There are services in Canada that do not make money but serve a needed transportation service. I have stood at the station in Thompson Manitoba waiting to meet a contact and watching all the taxis in Thompson meeting the train to take passengers into town to access the services Thompson provides. It was -30 plus, snowing, dark as hades, and a lively community was at work.

 

[Adjei]

Ottawa’s original grand downtown train station under consideration for city’s high speed rail hub

Original downtown Union Station, current Via Rail station both possible locations for capital’s high-speed terminus

www.theglobeandmail.com

Downtown Ottawa station being considered.

 

[micheal_can]

Ottawa’s original grand downtown train station under consideration for city’s high speed rail hub

Original downtown Union Station, current Via Rail station both possible locations for capital’s high-speed terminus

www.theglobeandmail.com

Downtown Ottawa station be considered.

At this point, the cost difference may not be enough to not bring HSR downtown.

 

[McGillicuddy]

I can't wait to learn how the well-connected NIMBYs of The Glebe feel about the possibility of thirty trains per day rolling past their canal-view houses.

 

[smallspy]

Most of us care about travel times. I couldn't give a flying fig about top speed. Please explain your obsession to me.

The obsession - if you think it is that - has to do with what is capable.

Some members seem to think that using the particular track that they are planning on using will enforce some sort of artificially low speed limit that could potentially damage the long-term viability of the project by making trains take longer than they otherwise could. My argument is that is not going to be the case.

Dan, respectfully, look at my posts over the last few days. Lots of what I've said does not necessarily contradict what you've said and vice versa. Yes, the French are capable of hitting very high speeds, much higher than their current operational speeds. But there are good reasons why those are on the occasional test run and not in regular service. I have not ignored what other countries do or are capable of. Quite the opposite. Instead of fixating on an exception to the general rule, as reason to disprove the rule, you should think about why so many countries switch to slab track at ≥300 km/h. General rule being that maintenance costs are prohibitive for speeds above 300 on ballasted track barring some special French sauce that comes with its own upfront costs. At >320, slab track more or less becomes a necessity for safety.

Tangent, but this applies to metros as well. Lots of old metros ran on ballasted track, but newly built metros have all switched to modern slab track. Maintenance costs, maintenance costs, maintenance costs. If the TTC could afford the upfront cost of an upgrade, I am sure they'd do so, to avoid the never-ending slow zone wack-a-mole. Does it make more sense to save up for slab track or a specialized French tamping machine for the subway? Annotated my previous post:


Since Alto is not going for slab track AFAIK, is it reasonable to fixate on the one country that does 320 km/h on ballasted track, and ignore all the others that do ≥300 on slab track? All the others that can only manage ≤300 on ballasted track?

On ballasted track, harsh weather, temperature and humidity swings can cause track geometry changes that require constant, expensive tamping. Case in point, South Korea, which switched to slab track partly to prevent rail buckling in the summer and frost heave in the winter. Rail buckling caused several passenger derailments in Korea. And Eastern Canada is known to have a South Korean-like climate with greater temperature swings than Western Europe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D9OBWlWRxk

Less related to ballast vs. slab, but France reduces top speeds during the winter due to ice and snow (like any other HSR country) https://www.groupe-sncf.com/en/group/behind-the-scenes/traffic-flows/flying-ice. Slab tracks still reduce flying ice and snow from the trackbed.

I highly doubt the easy copy+paste of 320 ballasted tech from France to Eastern Canada based on climatic differences alone.

"But sure, continue to ignore what other countries already do or are capable of...." What other countries? Dan, there are 3 countries that hit 320 and no higher: Japan, France and Morocco. Japan runs all 320 and lots of 300 on slab track. HSR in France and Morocco are French designed and built, which I hinted towards previously. For all intents and purposes, that's exactly one country that does what you are touting, 320 on ballasted track. While ignoring the cases against your narrative in China (250 to 350 all on slab), Indonesia (350 but Chinese), Japan, South Korea (305 on slab track), Spain (310 down to 300 due to ballast flight), Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey etc.

The preponderance of evidence does not favour your narrative Dan. @crs1026 It's only pedantry if one is fixated on the sole French case in a sea of non-outliers.

I'm not sure why you insist on writing 10,000 words when 100 will do, but hey, you do you.

How about this - neither you nor I are track structure experts. Despite the information that I have accumulated in 30 years around the railroad scene, and all of the people that I know and talk to on a regular basis, I would never consider myself an expert .in the professional sense.

But I know people who are experts, including one friend for whom this is his specialization.

He doesn't see it as a problem. Will it cost more in the long run? Yes. Will it be quicker and cheaper to build and install? Also yes. Is it a safety issue? Certainly in the context that you are portraying it, no.

If someone who works in the industry, and deals with track structures day-to-day doesn't see it as a problem, why do you continue to do so?

Dan

 

[micheal_can]

I can't wait to learn how the well-connected NIMBYs of The Glebe feel about the possibility of thirty trains per day rolling past their canal-view houses.

I am willing to bet it is a tunnel. No 'ugly' trains 30x+ times a day.

 

[urbanclient]

Is it a safety issue? Certainly in the context that you are portraying it, no.

I briefly mentioned safety once. Why are you fixated on these nitpick points? I never said safety was an everyday issue for ≤320 in the way it is currently achievable.

If regular service speeds above 320 are entirely feasible on ballasted track, why has this not happened in the 20 years since the first phase of LGV Est opened? Why are the top speeds for most French HSR lines ≤300?

At >320, slab track more or less becomes a necessity for safety.

But ultimately, you have again ignored the impact of increased costs. Gaining ~5 minutes on TO-OTT-MTL hardly justifies the higher capital costs, higher electricity usage and increased wear and tear, all of which undermine the project's economics. This is essentially diseconomies of scale, the scale being increased technical intensity yielding diminishing returns.

We do not have the capital equipment (such as HSR tamping machines), established supply chains (e.g. for special French-spec ballast), and institutional & industry knowledge required to cheaply replicate the French system capable of 320 km/h operations over roughly 1,000 km of piecemeal segments.

Going from 100 to 120 kph on the inevitable slow sections of Alto will likely save more time than squeezing out higher top speeds. Also no acknowledgement of the Spanish, Italian and Japanese counterevidence for 320 ballasted. The Spanish and Italian cases of abandoning higher speeds had to do with the economics of maintaining safety. If it were so easy to make 320 on ballast economically feasible, why don't any countries do it besides France? Read my posts again. I said it's physically possible to do 320 on ballast, just not feasible in most cases besides the French exception.

It's railfan nonsense that ignores real world constratints. Like cost. Or the basic mathematics of time saved. There's more to be gained from going [from 100 kph to 120 kph than from 300 kph to 320 kph.]

300 to 320 looks like a ~6.7% gain in speed, but it actually saves ≤5 minutes or ≤2.8% while using ~10% more electricity.

Your original reply was a big gotcha moment like I wasn't aware the French set the conventional speed record or something. Then you fallaciously harped on about test run speeds which offer very limited insight on what is achievable in regular service. If you had actually gleaned useful insight on HSR from someone you know, you'd know how specious it is to assume X speed on a test run in France means Y speed in regular service in Canada.

At that time, it seemed like you thought >320 km/h regular service was feasible on ballasted track. In case you meant this, even if it were feasible, you cannot empirically prove this since not one line exists in the world with regular speeds above 320 on ballast, and only two nations have some 320 segments on ballast. Occam's razor will tell you that the economics are unfavourable. Not some agenda against faster trains.

The vast, vast majority of the French network is ballasted track, and they've tested it up to almost 575km/h.

The LGV Est is operated at 320km/h every single day with no issues.

The French have seemed to have figured out the issue. Even in the test runs, where they ran many, many runs well in excess of 350km/h, they didn't have any issues with flying ballast.

Perhaps look into what they are doing?

The trains that operate the actual tests where they are aiming for the highest speed possible - yes. That is correct.

But part of those programs also involves operating regular trains at higher speeds than will be operated in revenue service. As part of the 1990 high-speed tests, for instance, a regular "Réseau" set - 2 locos and 8 intermediate cars, 200 metres long and which was already in revenue service - operated at speeds approaching 400km/h multiple times in advance of the modified trainset. They did the same thing again with the program run in 2007.

But sure, continue to ignore what other countries already do or are capable of....

320 all for what? 9-10 months of ≤5 minute savings then 2-3 months of much slower speeds due to ice and snow? Just because your friend or acquaintance told you something over a couple of metaphorical beers doesn't mean they're the final authority on HSR. There are virtually no active HSR experts based in North America, largely due to the fact that there are virtually no operational HSRs in North America, except for the Acela @ 260 km/h for 60 km. So-called expert opinion or 'insider knowledge' does not always beat logic and empirical evidence. Not the first time you've cited secondhand information and have it be wrong or mistranslated.

But I know people who are experts, including one friend for whom this is his specialization.

He doesn't see it as a problem. Will it cost more in the long run? Yes. Will it be quicker and cheaper to build and install? Also yes. Is it a safety issue? Certainly in the context that you are portraying it, no.

"Certainly in the context that you are portraying it, no." What context? I am baffled, in what context did I say 320 on ballast was impossible on safety grounds. It's just very costly, likely unfeasible for Alto, and certainly scope creep. $100 billion becomes $120 billion? $130 billion?

I may not be an HSR expert, but I have a background in economics and I'm mathematically literate enough to surmise the time saved is not worth the marginal costs. And similar to you, I know someone who worked on Chinese HSR before recently retiring. But not once did I cite my conversations with them to support my case. Appeals to secondhand authority are often flimsy. When we're all anonymous here, it can be entirely unverifiable.

Hate to burst your bubble, but 320 for Alto is a pipe dream on opening, and that's coming from someone who hopes they hit >300 eventually.

 

[McGillicuddy]

I am willing to bet it is a tunnel. No 'ugly' trains 30x+ times a day.

So we're contemplating a "re-use" of the old station that won't actually re-use the old station?

 

[micheal_can]

So we're contemplating a "re-use" of the old station that won't actually re-use the old station?

The building is currently where the MPs sit.Once the HoC construction is complete, it will be vacant, and could be used again. The tracks and other rail infrastructure is long gone. This is why a tunnel makes sense.

 

[McGillicuddy]

The building is currently where the MPs sit.Once the HoC construction is complete, it will be vacant, and could be used again. The tracks and other rail infrastructure is long gone. This is why a tunnel makes sense.

Senators, not MPs.

And the route into the station at grade is currently occupied by Colonel By Drive, Ottawa's convention centre, and the Pearkes building, which remains National Defence Headquarters despite the move to Carling. You would either need to remove all of that infrastructure, or you would have to tunnel into the station and have the trainshed below grade.

Colonel By is easy enough: the National Capital Commission owns it, so the federal government can get rid of it tomorrow if they like. There would be loud local objections, and not just from grouchy motorists (replacing a roadway with high-speed rail tracks would impede pedestrian and vehicular access to the eastern bank of the Rideau Canal), but you can solve that by spending enough money on tourist-friendly pedestrian overpasses and a couple of vehicular access points.

Pearkes is more of an issue. National Defence expects to vacate the building by 2035 at the earliest, and as the main barrier is the sheer amount of specialized and sensitive material and equipment to be relocated, that timeline will tend to resist compression. But if you can wait until the late 2030s to begin construction, sure, fine, whatever.

The convention centre, oh boy. The land belongs to the province, but there must be some sort of lease arrangement to operate the thing, and you better believe the Board of Trade and the Ottawa Tourism and Convention Authority would throw seven fits if they tried to relocate it to a greenfield site in the suburbs or whatever.

More broadly than all of this, you'd also be dealing with serious objections from the City of Ottawa and its well-connected residents about the environmental impact on the Rideau Canal and its various designations and listings, to say nothing of how local residents would feel about having trains "spoiling" their views of the canal or "cutting them off" from it. (In ways that the current roadway absolutely already does, but that's still the argument they'll make.)

It's not as simple as rolling up the road and laying down some track. The tunnel will be an attractive option, despite the fact that it makes for an extremely silly solution if you aren't actually using the building as anything other than a head house.

 

[crs1026]

I can't wait to learn how the well-connected NIMBYs of The Glebe feel about the possibility of thirty trains per day rolling past their canal-view houses.

I'm more interested in how Ottawa's Roads Department feels about the rerouting necessary to squeeze tracks where Colonel By runs today. And all the new over/underpasses to connect the station to the Tremblay area, it's already a spaghetti zone for roadways and pathways. And raising the Mackenzie King bridge, which is not sized for catenary.

While the head building of the old station remains, the trackage space needed to support a depot with multiple platforms has all been repurposed.

And is this premised on Montreal-Toronto trains not running into the depot at all? Or will they reverse direction? How long does that add to the trip time?

All this to save four or five stops' travel on the LRT?

- Paul

 

[McGillicuddy]

Frankly, the whole situation reads to me as a sop to the weirdos who inexplicably fantasize about re-using the station someday. They're going to demand to know why you aren't doing that, and it's easiest if you just say you're "looking into it".

 

[crs1026]

Frankly, the whole situation reads to me as a sop to the weirdos who inexplicably fantasize about re-using the station someday. They're going to demand to know why you aren't doing that, and it's easiest if you just say you're "looking into it".

It's a beautiful building, and it is reasonable to study the proposal once and for all, but mostly to point out the lack of necessity for this idea and put it to death.

Some form of fiscal sanity has to be exercised around Alto - otherwise it will grow from a $100B project to a $200B project. Sure seems to me that the money saved by sticking with the current depot exceeds the value gained by going back to the old one. We are talking a few LRT stops' worth of time, if people really are headed for the immediate downtown. A great many won't be.

- Paul